Editor's Note

The Charge

She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother.

Opening Statement

If there is a film that has been studied, parodied, copied, discussed, and
homaged more than Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, I couldn't name it. It has
spawned several books, commentaries, volumes of critical essays, a regrettable
remake, and a series of late-in-the-game sequels, and made it prohibitive for
families called Bates to ever name their sons "Norman." If it is not
the most famous film of all time, it is certainly in the top five.

While the academic attention to Psycho makes sense—this is
great filmmaking, and every frame is directed with a breathtaking precision and
layers of extended meaning—it tends to reposition it from its roots. Above
all else, Hitchcock made Psycho to be entertaining, an amusement park
ride with surprises and thrills at every turn. Time may have turned it into a
museum attraction, something to be revered, but looking at it nearly 50 years
after its premiere, there's not doubt that Psycho is as much a
masterpiece of popcorn as it as a work of art.

Universal's re-release of Psycho is a nice balance of fun and
reverence, and this two-disc set is a worthy treatment of this classic.

Facts of the Case

Marion Crane (Janet Leigh, Touch of
Evil) is desperate for cash. She wants to marry her lover, Sam (John Gavin,
Imitation of Life), but he is being
crushed by the debts of his late father and alimony to his ex-wife.

When Marion's boss asks her to deposit a $40,000 cash transaction in the
bank, she impulsively takes the money and runs. She's driving to Sam, but the
more she drives, the more she's consumed with fear, guilt, and regret.

When a rainstorm hits, she gets off the highway, and on a back road finds
the Bates Motel. "Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies," explains the
owner, a nervous, chatty young man named Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins,
Friendly Persuasion). Norman lives next door in a big, old house with his
mother, who is "ill." Marion feels pity for Norman when she hears the
old woman berating him.

Norman and Marion share sandwiches and conversation. She sees in Norman
something of a kindred soul; both are caught in traps and would like to flee to
a "private island."

Marion knows she has to go back and return the money, so she goes to her
room, planning to take a shower, get a good night's sleep, and leave early in
the morning.

But then, she encounters Mrs. Bates.

The Evidence

How exciting it must have been to have seen Psycho in a theater in the
summer of 1960, before it was a pop phenomenon and its considerable secrets and
surprises part of our cultural lexicon. Audiences screamed long and loud at the
violence, which was shocking in its time and is unsettling even today. Some
people fainted or got sick at the sight of blood running down a bathtub drain, a
simple image that is still more flesh crawlingly raw than anything a current
torture-porn film could serve up. The final reveal was the most shocking of
shock endings, built with unbearable intensity and exposing such decay,
depravity, and unmitigated horror that it was the stuff of nightmares.

Psycho was Hitchcock's last great film. As conceived, it was also one
of his least prestigious, a low-budget "quickie" made in response to
the cheap horror movies so popular at the time. Although for many, it's the film
most readily associated with Hitchcock, it was really not a typical Hitchcock
film, certainly not the Hitchcock of the previous decade.

Hitchcock in the '50s was known mostly for sophisticated and urbane capers,
usually with a strong male star (such as Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant) alongside
a gorgeous blonde (Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint) wearing beautiful
clothes, generally shot in color, often with exotic locales. His films were
suspenseful, yet sumptuous, thrillers with a strong angle of romance and
sex.

Psycho didn't even look like one of these films. It was black and
white, and a stark, harsh black and white, at that. Much of the action takes
place indoors and in modest, even squalid, places: low-rent motel rooms, a
rotting gothic house, a bland office. Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack, with its
murmuring strings and shrieking violins, inelegantly pushed the audience to the
edges of their seats from its opening strains.

There's no recognizable, comfortably handsome actor playing the hero; in
fact, there is no hero; no heroine either, just victims and victimizers,
sometimes the same character. We get two blondes this time, Janet Leigh and Vera
Miles (as Marion's sister, Lila), but they are not the glamorous Hitchcock
"ice blondes." Both are working women. Miles is really there as a
device—Lila goes looking for Marion after she runs off with the
$40,000.

Leigh is just great as Marion. Possibly Hitchcock's earthiest heroine, Leigh
is sensual and passionate, desperate and driven. She spends a good portion of
her screen time alone, and her emotions play vividly on her face. Her
spectacular exit overshadows an accomplished, and ultimately heartbreaking,
performance.

Anthony Perkins' turn as Norman Bates is, of course, legend, and it defined
the remainder of his career. Hitchcock, uncharacteristically, sought suggestions
from Perkins on how his character should be played. Many of Norman's
"touches"—for instance, constantly eating candy corn—were
from Perkins. Perkins was regularly typecast as a twitchy neurotic (or
psychotic) after making Psycho, and he revisited Norman Bates in Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986), and Psycho IV
(1990).

The real star of Psycho, of course, is Hitchcock. If ever a film was
a director's piece, it's Psycho. Hitchcock took a sleazy story about sex
and murder and turned it into one of the most inventive pieces of popular art
ever created, elevating it light years above its source, a novel by Robert Bloch
based on the life of serial killer Ed Gein.

Every frame contains clues, symbols, subtle references, and foreshadowing.
Hitchcock makes brilliant use of montage, particularly in Psycho's most
notorious scene, the shower murder—arguably, the most famous death scene,
if not the most recognizable sequence, in the history of film. The dialogue in
Joseph Stefano's script is rife with ironies and multiple meanings, not to
mention the blackest of humor.

Like a perfectly crafted roller coaster, Psycho constantly keeps us
off balance and on the edge. In keeping with its central theme of the dualities
of human nature, Psycho really is two completely different genre films
uneasily cohabiting under one title. At the 48-minute mark—when one story
ends and the other begins—the audience's expectations are so completely
sandbagged that they never again presume to know what to expect. Hitchcock plays
with perspective and tosses out a steady stream of red herrings. My favorite:
"If the woman up there is Mrs. Bates, who's that woman buried out in Green
Lawn Cemetery?"

When it opened in June of 1960, Psycho was not especially well
reviewed; critics seemed as surprised as the audience by the Hitchcock outing,
and not in a good way. It was only the film's popularity that brought about
critical revisits, and by the end of the year, it was one of the most talked
about films of its day.

Of course, it was, and remains, one of the most influential films of all
time. Imitations began almost immediately. Schlockmeister William Castle
premiered an earnest, yet wonderfully goofy, rip, Homicidal, exactly a year later. Other
directors, like Herschell Gordon Lewis, took advantage of the explicit gore to
turn out red paint-based schlockers. The entire "slasher" genre can be
traced back to Hitchcock's ode to motherhood. The word "psycho"
turning up in a title, whether it's Anatomy of a Psycho or
Psycho-Circus, or the more recent American Psycho, is routinely
associated with Hitchcock, and "more terrifying (or shocking or scarier)
than Psycho" remains a standard advertising comparative.

Hitchcock's bravura direction netted an Oscar nomination; Perkins' bravura
performance did not. In addition to Hitchcock, the Academy nominated Janet Leigh
(Supporting Actress), and the cinematography and art direction. Besides Perkins,
Sefano's script, Herrmann's score, and George Tomasini's editing were
overlooked, as was the film itself.

Some years back, Universal released a very good edition of Psycho,
with a better-than-average (though not Anamorphic) transfer and a decent slate
of extras. While there was no commentary, there was an excellent 90-minute
documentary, "The Making of Psycho," that includes interviews
with Janet Leigh, Pat Hitchcock, .Joseph Stefano, Clive Barker, and Hitchcock's
long-time assistant, Peggy Robertson. One of my favorite supplements was a
vintage EPK/sales reel for theater owners about the release of the film,
including the "No one admitted after the movie starts" policy and the
whole, "Please don't divulge the plot" campaign. We also got an
in-depth look at the shower sequence and a number of still galleries.

For this new Special Edition, part of the Universal Legacy Series, all the
supplements from the original release have been ported over. In addition, we get
a remastered, Anamorphic picture, along with some terrific new extras.

The new transfer really looks like great, a vast improvement on the old
letterboxed video last time around. The contrast is excellent, the blacks deep.
There's a fair amount of grain and some slight flecks and specks, but I suspect
that these are just part of the film. The audio remains the original two-channel
mono track, and it sounds fine, balanced and free of distortion, the way it was
intended to sound.

This time, we do get a commentary, a fact-and-trivia-filled solo number with
Stephen Rebello, author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.
Rebello is very engaging, tossing out bits of information that you might or
might not have heard before. The best parts are when he relates his own memories
of seeing Psycho in a theater in the '60s.

"In the Master's Shadow: Hitchcock's Legacy" features filmmakers
talking about Hitchcock's enduring influence. Among others, we hear from John
Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, Eli Roth, and Guillermo del Toro.
This is far better than the usual back-slapping puff piece-type tribute to a
great director. We get lots of clips, from Hitchcock's films as well as the
films of those participating, and the filmmakers offer interesting and valuable
insights. Watch for Scorsese's comparison of a fight sequence in Raging Bull to the shower scene in
Psycho.

Some excerpts from the legendary Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews from the
early 1960s are included as an audio-only extra. Communicating through an
interpreter, these are a great listen. Especially funny: François Truffaut
finding as many ways as he can to express his disdain for the book on which
Psycho was based.

Just for fun, we get one of the most memorable episodes of Alfred
Hitchcock Presents, the long-running anthology series. The episode included
here is "Lamb to the Slaughter," directed by Hitchcock and starring
Barbara Bel Geddes. This one's a real treat, and it makes sense, too:
Psycho was closer in spirit and production to what Hitchcock was doing on
television, and "Lamb to the Slaughter" was one of his darkest and
wittiest TV outings.

Closing Statement

This one's an easy recommend. If you have the previous edition, the new
transfer and supplements make this set a worthwhile double dip. If Psycho
is not part of your collection, this set is a must-own.

The Verdict

It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son.

Fortunately, the Bates family is spared any more shame.

Psycho is one of the all-time great films, and Universal has done
right by it.